Archive for April 2008

Denmark is one of the countries in the world where the least number of citizens have low incomes, shows a new study.

According to the study, Denmark has a record high minimum wage in comparison to the other countries in the study.

‘In fact, our minimum wage corresponds to the median wage in the US,’ said professor Niels Westergaard-Nielsen, project manager of the study. ‘Approximately 50 percent of Americans earn less than, or just as much as a Danish worker on minimum wage.’

The study, conducted by researchers from Copenhagen Business School and Århus University, also indicated that Danes left poor paying jobs in record time.

Only France matched Denmark in terms of workers quickly switching from a lower income job to a better one. Countries such as the Netherlands, the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom were also included in the survey.

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The Far-Right is on course to make its biggest-ever electoral breakthrough in Britain this week, anti-fascist campaigners have admitted.

The British National Party has focused its efforts on winning a seat on the 25-member London Assembly, which would give it a national profile and a say in the running of the capital. Anti-fascist group Searchlight admits it will “require a Herculean feat” to stop the BNP from winning.

If the BNP succeeds, Richard Barnbrook will be catapulted to fame as the party’s first assembly member. He claims that “asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are engulfing London”, and his policies include banning the Islamic veil on public transport.

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The duly elected sheriff of a county is the highest law enforcement official within a county. He has law enforcement powers that exceed that of any other state or federal official.

This is settled law that most people are not aware of.

County sheriffs in Wyoming have scored a big one for the 10th Amendment and states rights. The sheriffs slapped a federal intrusion upside the head and are insisting that all federal law enforcement officers and personnel from federal regulatory agencies must clear all their activity in a Wyoming County with the Sheriff’s Office. Deja vu for those who remember big Richard Mack in Arizona.

Bighorn County Sheriff Dave Mattis spoke at a press conference following a recent U.S. District Court decision (Case No. 2:96-cv-099-J (2006)) and announced that all federal officials are forbidden to enter his county without his prior approval ……

“If a sheriff doesn’t want the Feds in his county he has the constitutional right and power to keep them out, or ask them to leave, or retain them in custody.”

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Imagine: One day you’re frolicking in the open air on a large compound, doing your daily chores and feasting on hearty homegrown fare; the next you’re gagging on a diet of T&A courtesy of MTV and fast-food compliments of your fat foster mom. As the makeshift mom hollers at you to swallow your zombifying meds – the Texas foster care system is notorious for pumping its charges full of psychotropic drugs – her flaccid live-in lover eyes you lustily.

As I write, many of the kids kidnapped by Texas rangers from the Yearning for Zion ranch are being scattered across the state to far-flung group homes and shelters. In the land of the free and home of the brave, hundreds of children can be rounded up and removed from their families based on a hunch or a hoax. No hue and cry will ensue – not from professional civil libertarians, nor from members of the unwatchful dogs in the media, or from presidential candidates vying to uphold – or is it just to hold – the Constitution.

How about it Hillary, Barack? Have you a message of hope for the children seized from the sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? Of course you don’t. During an election season, it would take a village idiot to defend the quaint idea of the autonomous family. To do that would involve an implicit retreat from the position that children are first and foremost wards of the state, and their parents nothing but low-level civil servants who must obey the state’s child-rearing directives, or else.

The-state-as-parent is a leftist legal doctrine that has been eagerly embraced by the rigor-mortis-riddled right.

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MSU speaker to discuss growth rates, shortages

Among population experts, there is growing concern once again that the earth’s finite supplies of water, oil, minerals and land are being decimated by rising demands as a result of the exponential increase in world population.

Last year, there was a net world population increase of 80 million people, according to Werner Fornos, the director of Global Population Education

“Those 80 million new people have to be fed, housed, educated and have access to potable water. At a world population of 6.7 billion now,” he said, “we are on course — according to U.N. estimates — to hit 9.2 billion by 2050.

“How are we going to accommodate all these people and their aspirations for jobs and livable conditions?” he asked.

Tuesday, the 38th anniversary of Earth Day, Fornos will deliver his second lecture at Midwestern State University on current population growth rates, world population programs and how the growth in population relates to the environment.

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Unemployment rates are rising across the United States, except Oklahoma. That state is experiencing the most dramatic reduction in unemployment since 2007, an improvement many in Oklahoma attribute to the passage last year by the state legislature of a strong employment-focused immigration reform law.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday reported unemployment in Oklahoma had fallen to 3.1 percent in March, down from 4 percent in March last year, while unemployment nationwide was 5.1 percent, up from 4.4 percent in March last year.

“Oklahoma is no longer ‘OK’ for illegal aliens,” said State Rep. Randy Terrill, who sponsored House Bill 1804 which passed by overwhelming majorities last year in both the House (84-14) and Senate (41-6) of the Oklahoma Legislature.

“The bottom line is illegal aliens will not come here if there are no jobs waiting for them,” Terrill said. “They will not stay here if there is no government subsidy, and they certainly won’t stay here if they know that if they ever encounter our state and local law enforcement officers, they will be physically detained until they are deported.”

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LANCASTER, Calif. - Hundreds of illegal immigrants awaiting deportation rioted at a county-run detention center and had to be subdued with tear gas, authorities said Wednesday.

The riot Tuesday started as a fight between detainees from rival gangs and spread to the detention center’s outdoor yard, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Nearby sheriff’s stations sent additional deputies to separate the detainees. The brawl was diffused “within minutes” after tear gas was used, said sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Fights among incarcerated gang members periodically break out at state jails, prisons and immigrant detention facilities, sometimes sparking riots.

The federal Department of Homeland Security contracts with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to staff and manage the Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster, which holds about 900 detainees who are in the process of being deported or awaiting resolution of their cases in immigration courts.

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DES MOINES — Trying to deal with an influx of illegal immigrants, the Iowa House moved forward Wednesday with a measure meant to reduce the employment of undocumented workers.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, D-Des Moines, said Democrats wanted to send a message to the federal government and try to deal with a problem Iowans have been concerned about.

“The symbolic statement is a plea to the federal government to start enforcing the law and have a comprehensive, logical immigration policy,” McCarthy said.

The measure, which cleared the House on an 84-16 vote, requires employers to check driver’s licenses or other state-issued photo identification from Iowa or the surrounding states and verify it within 10 business days of a hire. Employers or their designee must sign a form under penalty of perjury confirming they have examined the ID and “facially validated” the employee.

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Prostate and breast cancer are more deadly for African Americans than for whites. Now it seems that differences in the activity of key genes may be partly to blame.

Black men in the US are around 60% more likely to develop prostate cancer than their white counterparts, and are more than twice as likely to die from the disease.

In large part, these differences are thought to be due to socioeconomic factors such as access to healthcare. But at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in San Diego on 15 April, Tiffany Wallace of the US National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, argued that biological differences between the tumours of blacks and whites are also involved.

Wallace and her colleagues used “gene chips” to scan for gene activity in prostate tumours removed from 33 African-American and 36 white patients. There were significant differences between blacks and whites for the activity of more than 160 genes, many of which were involved in regulating the immune system.

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Harris County residents increasingly carry negative views about immigrants, saying they burden tax-supported services including schools and hospitals while contributing to crime, according to the 2008 Houston Area Survey.

The survey, conducted annually since 1982 by Rice University sociology professor Stephen Klineberg, questioned local residents recently about the economy, housing, immigration and other topics.

The survey found 63 percent agreed that new immigration should be limited, up from 48 percent in 2004. Meanwhile, 61 percent of those polled said illegal immigrants are a ”very serious” problem, up from 43 percent in 2006.

This year, 56 percent favored granting citizenship to illegal immigrants who have learned English and didn’t have a criminal record, down from 68 percent in 2007. And today, 43 percent believe immigrants contribute more than they take, down from 52 percent in 2002.

The pessimistic attitudes toward immigrants are striking in an area as diverse as Houston. Nearly 25 percent of Harris County’s population of 3.8 million is foreign-born, according to 2006 Census Bureau data.

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